Zomtober 2018 week 4

And so, we find ourselves at the final Sunday deadline of this year's Zomtober, surprisingly having not once missed a posting deadline (he types, tempting fate). Thus, I present another six zombies, three at a time (because the pictures get even worse if I try to squeeze them all into one picture), which I think takes me to having painted one of every unique walker sculpt in my Walking Dead starter box bar the zombified Rick figure:

These three are fairly plain, and include the Limited Edition 'Ronnie' walker (the lad in the shirt emblazoned with multiple letter M's). I saw a picture of the actual chap that the sculpt is based on this week, and have no idea why I'd envisioned him as a redhead. Ah well, I still think it rather suits him...

Three walkers that I'm infinitely more pleased with - the first I love for the dodgy freehand on the vest; the second is a lovely figure, being from the Limited Edition Clementine & Lee Booster; and the third I love because despite a slightly odd facial sculpt (having a face shape not unlike a Necron) and appearing to be draped in a bin bag there's just something brilliant about it, and I thoroughly enjoyed painting it. I also went all out on painting texture on the jeans on this figure that is pretty much unnoticeable in these pictures (and real life), but hey I know it's there [he weeps].

Here's another angle on the deer-munching figure, as his hunched pose makes it a little hard to see when photographed with his pals:

Side Note: I haven't played any of the Telltale Games Walking Dead games, so don't really know the significance of this figure. I probably should get around to it one of these days...

But what's that, there's more?

Not content with just painting zombies for Zomtober, I wanted to try and add another Spawn Point to my collection to go with the ones from a previous year, to take my total up to four, which seems a better number for spreading around a table evenly...

My plan was to make a Spawn Point inspired by the mounds of bodies that appear in a Walking Dead app that I briefly played some time last year (might have been called Road to... something. I forget). Several levels had these mounds of bodies that every so often would wiggle and disgorge more walkers, and I quite liked the idea of trying to produce something inspired by them in miniature form!

I grabbed a base to match my previous ones, and set about cutting some cork to make a mound (in order to give the piece some additional height without having to use more miniatures that you wouldn't even see in the middle of the pile):

A couple of round bases made the perfect templates to give a regularly rising slope:

Although when I posed a miniature next to it, I decided that maybe it needed a little boost and gave it another layer of cork for height:

I popped a weight on top to hold it down while the glue dried (I started with PVA, but added some superglue when that took too long to set), and once it had, I applied some filler to smooth out the transitions between layers:

It was at this point that I realised that I'd grabbed the wrong tube of filler, having grabbed a tiling one that is more rubbery that that which I would normally use. Taking a Bob Ross like approach of 'happy little accidents', I figured I'd press on and see how it turned out.

I deliberated on whether to sand the base now (in order to make sure that there were no missed spots, as there might be if I tried to apply glue into the nooks and crannies between figures) or after I'd applied the figures (in order to make them look like they were slightly buried), and settled on the former. I didn't take a picture of that step, oddly, but imagine a slightly sad tiny wedding cake covered in sand and grit and you wouldn't be far off.

Now, for the bodies, I sifted through several boxes of odds and ends and came up with a few Doctor Who Miniatures figures, some Heroclix, as well as a Mantic Walking Dead Walker that I have several copies of the same sculpt of (one of which you've seen earlier in this post - I got two in my starter box, and I think got a couple as a sample at a previous Salute), and then scavenged some left over limbs and other assorted body parts from sprues, everything from zulus to Frostgrave Barbarians!

I tried the old 'hot water trick' on the Doctor Who figures to try and make them lie more naturally, but they didn't seem to take to it as well as other figures I've tried it on, so I had to fall back on cutting and re-positioning limbs, cunning placement, and in the end an avant-garde approach to realism. I also cut out some short lengths of sprue that I sunk into the base (thanks slightly softer than usual filler for making it so easy to jab a piece in, then fill the resulting hole with glue to hold it in place) to look like lengths of metal rebar poking out of the ground and rubble - a few were positioned to make it look as if the bodes had come to rest on them, rather than having a limb mysteriously held upwards of it's own volition!

A couple of nights of carefully piling tiny bodies, and I had my mound ready for a blast of spray undercoat:

Then it was just a case of frantically getting it painted as the Sunday posting deadline loomed ever closer! I went with a fairly muted palette, figuring that it's more a piece of terrain than an eye catching figure, and went to town weathering everything with grimy washes, as well as stippling on various shades of dust and grime, before finishing with a healthy dose of blood effects:

Here you can see the detail that I added to make it a Spawn Point rather than just a macabre piece of blocking terrain, a zombie hauling himself out from under the pile of bodies made from a Wargames Factory zombie body and reaching arm with a Westwind zombie head (as the Wargames Factory zombie face sculpts are awful, and only really useful to fill gaps between corpses on the pile as they do here):

Here is a size comparison against one of my original Spawn Points:

And with a survivor:

Whilst taking the pictures for this post, I realised that the base for this one was noticeably darker than everything else that I've finished, so went back and gave it an additional Bleached/Ushabti Bone drybrush, so now it looks more like this:

The piece as a whole is much darker than everything else I've finished, but hey, it's a grubby pile of bloody bodies, that's to be expected! If anything, I should probably go back and bloody up the ground a little more...

So, with that included, here is this Zomtober's complete output:

Not bad going at all, I think! I just need to paint some Survivors and I could even try out the All Out War rules in order to procrastinate on playtesting my own...

Which brings the Tally to:

32 vs -46 = +78

Hmm, 20 more figures to paint in the next two months if I'm going to hit that 'average one painted figure a week by the end of the year' challenge I set myself...

Also, for the first time in the history of ever, I'm disappointed that it's a four rather than five week Zomtober this year, as there were a few more bits that I had on the go that didn't managed to get finished in time to get added to this final submission. Who knows, maybe I'll get them finished and have a bonus fifth week post next week; maybe my hobby focus will sweep on to something else and they won't see the light of day until next year's Zomtober...

Salute 2017

So, today was the annual jaunt to Salute! Early morning coaches make for manic gamers, it seems:

Westminster is always my favourite stop on the journey up, as you feel like you're in a weird hybrid of Necromunda and The Crystal Maze:

The journey up was fairly uneventful; the station we normally get off is apparently closed for the rest of the year, but it turns out the stop after actually drops you off closer to Salute, so it's swings and roundabouts really! Well, on the way there, the way out was a bit of a nightmare with huge crowds that would normally be split over two stops funnelled onto one...

We made pretty good time, and so ended up quite close to the front of the queue:

After a mad initial dash over to Troll Trader to scope their bargains and snaffle a goody bag, I made the usual rounds, picking up the preorders I had organizedly placed, and not at all pinballing willy-nilly around flailing wildly at things as they caught my eye (just in case my wife asks).

And so, I present the usual assortment of pictures that are really only the barest of fractions of the number of awesome things that were on display:

A Discworld broom racing game with a nice Unseen University

Some dungeon tiles! I forget who makes them, but I'm fairly sure I have a card of theirs in the stack of paperwork and fliers I've accrued over the course of the day

Anvil Industries had the most eye-catching demo board - they were running games on the bonnet and in the back of this vehicle!

A Mantic Walking Dead demo board. I'm not going to start another project. Even though I found out I can get the core game at massive discount through work. No more projects. None.

A nice Horus Heresy board, with about a billion points and pounds worth of miniatures on it.

My favourite part of the whole board though was a little spinning radar dish.

Crooked Dice's London and Underground demo board - having followed the build over on the LAF a while back, it was great to see it in the flesh!

Warlord were showing off the new Doctor Who game - I'm still not sure if it's a board game or a wargame at this point... (side note - no Judge Dredd minis anywhere this year, boo)

Osprey were previewing their new dwarf sculpts.

I also managed to find the nice man from Westfalia (after last year's difficulties in hunting him down) who was offering preview minis of his lovely range.

Another Doctor Who board game, whose pieces look to paint up very nicely!

This Chewbacca was pretty good - about 7 foot tall, with a recorded roar!

Saga. I've never really gotten into Saga. Maybe I should.

I managed to miss the Blogger meet-up again, as in the excitement of the day I lost track of time and before I knew it it was quarter to two! This year's Salute seemed like it went by the fastest of the ones I've attended...

And five hours later, it was time to make the journey back, and time to dig through other people's blogs to find the things that I'd managed to miss. I also wondered why there were some people missing from previous years, like Amera, Brother Vinni and EM4 - whilst Salute seemed to be pretty busy and fly past for me, is it not worth it for some companies who have stayed away? It's a shame if that's the case...

Also, I found myself in someones Instagram video, something which never normally happens! Well, I found the back of my head, but that still counts.

And so, the meat of this post - the loot!

• A box of Frostgrave barbarians, as well as a couple of blisters from the same range
• A pair of giant scorpions from Heresy
• Not Rey, post apoc Raider type and a not Captain Hammer from Hasslefree
• A handful of lovely preview minis from Westfalia
• The Walking Dead scenery pack
• A trio of sample Mantic Walking Dead miniatures
• A pair of Infinity miniatures, because they were crazily reduced and also buy one get one free
• Not Brienne and not Flashman (and the promo mini!) from Wargames Illustrated
• Alliance Smuggler and Grand Inquisitor packs for Imperial Assault
• Dogs, heads and crates from Crooked Dice
• A not-tiny Lady Mormont pack from Bad Squiddo games - I was hoping to get a few more bits from them, but by the time I was able to get there when their stand wasn't thronged with people the majority of the bits I was after had sold out!
• Freebie Wild West Exodus Legendary Captain Nimue
• Dice, because I roll bad.
• A copy of the last edition of the Skaven army book that I didn't own, as I regretted not buying it last year and it was still sat in the same box on the same stall a year later! I may well go to my bookshelf to file it and find that I've gotten mixed up between what editions I have though... While writing this list I've just discovered that the book's previous owner had apparently torn out the last page with the rules reference on and used it as a bookmark...
• The Salute promo mini
• A goody bag from Troll Trader containing a variety of bits - a couple of old edition rulebooks (Deadzone & Carnevale), a painting DVD, a hexagon stencil, a cardboard house, assorted other bits and bobs, as well as a preview mini for the new Rumbleslam game and a Goblin Shaman miniature
• Free beer mats, which I was genuinely excited about

Tally

9 vs 40 = -31

Not the worst hole I've been in after a Salute!

So, just need to finish off a few more miniatures to tick off a couple more challenges, prep and paint something for May the Fourth, and knock out a Westfalia promo after that, before I can start any of the number of new miniatures clamouring for my attention - easy!

[note - some additional stuff has been added to this post Sunday morning that I managed to miss last night!]

Zomtober week 3-5 - 'skinny Wights'

So, this is my submission for week 3, 4, and potentially 5 of Zomtober 2016 (as we're off to Germany next week, so I'm unlikely to be able to get anything else finished and posted in time):

 

What I've come to refer to as 'skinny Wights' -  a mixture of Mantic, Perry and Frostgrave bits to make some more dessicated wights to supplement the batch I previously completed, inspired by images like this:

Although I'll admit, the skeletal pup isn't entirely in keeping with the original idea, but it was such a cool little piece that I just couldn't resist...

Especially fun was getting to play with weathering on these miniatures, which isn't something I'd really done much of previously. Enjoy, a selection of some of the shields that got a little extra detail before being weathered to within an inch of their lives:

(if you follow me on Instagram you'll recall the trials and tribulations I went through finding where past me had stored my transfer sheets, only to then mostly obscure them with weathering. Eh, c'est la vie!)

Most importantly, they seem to mix fairly well with the other Wights I've painted, and the slight scale and style discrepancy between the two sets isn't overly jarring, as the 'skinny' wights are meant to look thinner than their more recently deceased comrades!

Completing these takes the Tally to:

48 vs 342 = -294

Only 4 away from hitting an average of one miniature a week for the year, and only 11 away from catching up to last year's total.

And so here they are based for mass battle:

If I paint their icy leaders, I think I could probably knock together another couple of Wights using left over bits from the Mantic sprues and some Perry bits and then have enough miniatures to fill a fourth WOTR base (and then I'll go back and see about adding some dead grass and snow to all of their bases at the same time)

Birthday loot!

It was my birthday last Sunday, and miniature loot from Mother, whilst exciting, means another hit to the Tally:

24 vs 131 = -107

I plan to split the box, and use roughly half for Frostgrave and the rest for some Wildling conversions...

Salute 2015

As you may or may not know (although as you're here reading this I imagine that it might have crossed your radar), yesterday was Salute, the annual pilgrimage to the Excel centre to look at upcoming releases, see some awesome displays, and stock up on little metal men to last us through the next winter...

Breaking with tradition this year (as I was travelling up with different people than usual) we hit up Ed's diner for breakfast, which unfortunately seems to be American food served with English portion sizes... A milkshake at breakfast is always going to be a winner though...

What follows is a series of photos, in the meandering order that they were taken as things caught my eye, so be warned, if you're after a direct or narratively-sequential account of the show you've come to the wrong place!

As ever, there was a multitudinous throng of humanity between me and the doors, but the queue did tick along at a fair old pace. I will admit though, I was disappointed at the end when the queue dissolved into a stampede, despite the opportunities for 'hold the line' references that such an occurrence affords...

A pretty cool looking 'Frotherheim' table, complete with some subterranean tunnels action:

I forget who put this Agincourt table on, but remember being jealous of so many painted medievals, many of which I have tucked away awaiting a future paintbrush assault...

Studio Miniatures had previews of some of their upcoming not-Monty Python miniatures (I mean, zombie apocalypse at a Ren Faire range, of course), as well as some rather nice contemporary urban resin scenery that I hadn't seen anywhere before:

Beasts of War (I think) put on a huge Star Wars battle of Hoth table, with literally bucket-loads of figures, which made me somewhat envious:

As it just goes on and on...

And includes a full on AT-AT assault!

Doubly awesome is the fact that although I had originally assumed it was just a display table on my first circuit of the room, when I swung by again a while later I realised that it was actually a needlessly large participation game, which is pretty cool!

Whoever put this series of games on, there was a lot of cool stuff, from the wicker man, to the ye olde Judge Dredd, to the sheer number of painted factions on display!

This may have been Spartan Games' fleet scale Halo game. I'm not sure right now, at the point of writing this I last had 5 hours sleep 18 and a half hours ago, so some details are a little hazy... [id originally aimed to get this post up last night, but that turned out to be a somewhat ambitious objective. This also explains any contradictions between the use of the past and present tense that you might find in the rest of the post!]

This was an amazing oldhammer table that in hindsight I really wish I'd gotten better pictures of! There were a load of Dogs of War pikemen facing off against various greenskins and miscellaneous nasties, hopefully someone else in the blogosphere took some pictures of the other end of the table!

A man in a funny hat told me when this game was set, and I probably have a flier somewhere, but I have so many fliers from yesterday that I could make my baby some sort of terrible papercraft suit of armour. There was a cool little market in the corner of the board though, which I plan to steal heavy inspiration from should I get round to gaming the Ned vs Jaime duel I've been meaning to do for a while now...

There was a Space Marine, and I managed to capture on film the true use of the Imperial Guard (or whatever we're meant to be calling them these days) - as a sweat mopper for the real warriors!

This table was awesome, and I have less than no memory of which game it was for! There seemed to be evil gribblies pouring onto the earth, and the table even had lights inside so that it looked like lava (or hellfire) was glowing out of the cracks in the shattered pavement!

This is a terrible, terrible picture of a really nice Arkham Asylum board, taken over the shoulder of the manager of my local GW, who I had assumed would burst into flames if he set foot in a non-GW only event.

Frostgrave (Osprey's upcoming new game) demo table, using the spectacularly nice Secret Weapon tablescape tiles. I was too late for a demo this time, but vowed to return...

Simon de Montfort table put on by Wargames Illustrated? 

Had a look at the Terminator Genisys miniatures to see if I liked them any more in person, but they still just don't sit right with me. I'm not sure what it is, I just can't put my finger on why I don't like them! They look a bit anaemic and flimsy, maybe that's it...

Killing time before a Frostgrave demo spot opened up, I had a nosey at the Osprey stand, who as well as having a printout copy of the rulebook available to leaf through (and I'm now super excited to be getting a copy of this) had the various wizards painted as well as the 3ups of the forthcoming plastic henchmen that I can but imagine I'll be getting a box or two of:

After missing my chance to get a demo of Frostgrave in, I was ready for the next slot and dived in as soon as it became available (which resulted in me being otherwise occupied when I would normally hit up the bloggers meet up for awkward small talk and purchase comparisons). Unfortunately, no one else seemed as keen so it took a little while to find an opponent, but eventually one appeared and we were away!

For the demo, we were using small warbands and scaled down rules, I believe - I found myself in charge of a necromancer and some lowly henchmen.

The game started well, I thought, despite my appallingly low rolls (as it was a third of the way through the game before I managed to roll in the double-digits on a d20), making a grab for the objective.

Unfortunately, I was soon to discover just how deadly critical hits are in Frostgrave, as my gold-grabbing henchmen discovered when he was decapitated after falling to minus 14 health (and he only had 12 to begin with). Despite all seeming lost at this point, I managed to turn the game around with some carefully placed necromantic magic and the heroic actions of my remaining soldier henchmen, who managed to, after shrugging off arrows, sword blades, poison darts and curses, score a crit on the enemy that had taken my other henchmen out of action with a crit! At one point, we discussed the idea that he might in fact be the leader of my warbands, with the guy in the robes and mascara being a patsy (which is entirely possible, as my tactics largely revolved around trying to use my frail wizard as bait to lure the enemy away from the objective while my soldiers made a run for it!)

A few swingy turns later (and some cunning positioning to have one model fire, then step out of the way so that the model behind could also fire), I'd all but wiped my foes from the board and won myself a pair of chocolate coins as a prize! 

[side note - I don't normally get involved in playing games at Salute, normally contenting myself just to watch or buy things, but Frostgrave looks really good, and I thoroughly enjoyed the demo game, so I'm glad I did, even though it meant I missed the annual bloggers meetup!]

I think this was called Stalagbites? There was no-one at the table whenever I was nearby, so I don't know if they were demoing something, or just showing off their weird eye rock thing...

Across the Dead Earth! I thought I'd taken a bigger picture that showed off the ruin-strewn game table that they had on display, but apparently not, so you'll unfortunately have to content yourself with a close-up of some scenery and this sign that I took a picture of solely so that I'd be able to remember to properly label what table this was when I came to write this post:

I'm currently playing through the Mass Effect series, so it brought me great pleasure to denote this sign as a meeting place!

And it just wouldn't be a geeky event without Darth Vader appearing to stomp around and pose for photos would it?

And now finally the part that I'm sure you've all been waiting for, seeing just how much Salute loot I came away with after last year's really quite restrained purchases:

Erm...

• A couple of the freebie miniature, because it has a choice of sets of arms and heads and I'm often riven with indecision when it comes to these things (although you may notice that there's actually 3 in the picture, because I bought one as a present for Uncle Johnny who wasn't able to come to Salute this year) as well as a couple of Salute dice and a fire arc template
• Hasslefree pre-orders of various bits and bobs, some acrylic rod, some Jedi-sequel figures, some miscellaneous other figures, and some shields of the type that I use for my press-moulded House Stark shields...
• Fenris games pre-order, which was mostly some sculpted bases, a few scatter scenery bits and a zebra (or zorse, eventually...)
• A box of the new Perry Miniatures Light Cavalry, because everything they do is beautiful and there are plenty of bits in the box to plunger for ASOIAF project conversions
• Some Knight models Batman miniatures and some laser-cut crates, as the latest flash in the pan project that I hope to get a game of (let's just say that I bought enough to get a free limited edition Red Hood model) 
• Random werebear because it was a pound
• Some snow flock because it was mega cheap and at some point I may get round to modelling some Night's Watch and Wights...
• A blister of Gripping Beast revenants, for use as generic fantasy zombies or Game of Thrones Wights, and being told to 'get lost' when I asked after the sporting wizards, as is my tradition...
• A Frostgrave badge
• Some Judge Dredd guns as a present for Uncle Johnny (as he is generally displeased with all the miniatures currently available, and plans to convert his own, so I thought this would be a good gift as he can make things easily look more Mega City 1 with these distinctly 2000AD looking weapons!) and a freebie judge for myself
• An issue of Wargames Illustrated, to get the freebie Simon de Montfort miniature with his lovely lion-sigiled shield (he may get painted up as a Kevan Lannister stand-in)
• A dice set and the promo card pack for Firefly the board game
• Some simians from Lucid Eye, because they look perfect for intelligent apes for the planet of the apes side project I have tucked away
• A free sprue of ghouls from Mantic for signing up to their mailing list again
• A Foundry black paint triad, because painting black is a real struggle for me (my highlights go too light, it looks chalky, I hit it with a dark wash to try and mute it a bit, it looks flat black again, I give up and move on to painting something else)
• An infinity ninja, for a Mass Effect project conversion
• A not-future Amy Pond from Crooked Dice, because I try to buy at least one thing from them every year and I'm sure I've got a couple of 28mm scale handbot figures somewhere that she could fight...
• And the Westfalia Miniatures halfling sample figure, which is absolutely gorgeous:

I almost missed out on grabbing this figure, as despite having posted on Facebook a message along the lines of 'I have a particular set of skills, I don't know who you are but I will find you and I will take you up on your kind offer of a free sample miniature' I didn't find the guy from Westfalia miniatures until just as we were planning to leave, as trying to find one person in a black branded t-shirt at the event is a bit like trying to find Wally in a crowd of similarly dressed people! 

The chap from Westfalia miniatures asked me if I was a good painter when he gave me the mini too, so I alas had to disappoint him, leading to a funny conversation about being an enthusiastic rather than skilled painter!

All in, my haul for the day takes the Tally down to 

18 vs 80 = -62

Not insurmountable, and definitely not the biggest haul I've ever brought back from Salute!